With a name that means “disappearing like a vapor,” Evanescence, it seems, almost begged to enact its name and fade into the night, especially after the heavy, consistent dosage of drama that plagued the band from almost day one. Five years have passed since the last Evanescence record came out, which gave fans, media, and critics plenty of time to create a cloud of rumors about break-ups and solo projects, but the band is more “truly a band now than ever before,” frontwoman Amy Lee proclaims. The band’s new album, simply self-titled, “Evanescence,” will hit stores in the U.S. October 11, 2011.

Evanescence Boots Steve Lillywhite

This new body of work comes only after a long, personal journey for the band, especially Amy Lee. She told SPIN back in 2008 that she was trying to break into movie scoring and that she was writing new music on her own that was “nothing [she] would categorize as Evanescence.” As of March 2010, Lee remarked that she had realized that “Evanescence is who I am,” and the band was supposedly headed in an “electro-pop” direction with producer Steve Lillywhite (U2, Dave Matthews, Rolling Stones) for the new record—a pretty risky change for a band that built global fame with gothic hard rock. Some rumors assert that Wind-Up Records, the band’s label, rejected the Lillywhite recordings with a request for the band to produce music more akin to their signature sound, while other rumors attribute the split with Lillywhite to financial issues for Wind-Up and the producer’s inability to pull the record together in a timely fashion.

An article from Billboard magazine indicated that going back to square one in recording this record was Lee’s decision, though the remarks the magazine quotes from the label’s president are a bit more ambiguous: “One thing we do at Wind-up is, we’re patient. It [sic] it’s not right, it’s not coming out,” Wind-Up Records president Ed Vetri states. “If it takes a year or four years, [we’re] going to take the time it needs to write the right record.” (http://www.billboard.com/#/news/amy-lee-new-evanescence-album-is-much-more-1005230332.story)

Lee commented officially to Rolling Stone: “I’ve come to realize now I was making like a solo record, and if it was going to be an Evanescence record, we needed to come together and make it like a band.” Even though interviews back in March of 2010 indicated she had really found herself in the sessions with Lillywhite and with producer/programmer Will “Science” Hunt—not the same Will Hunt as is currently the drummer, by the way—Lee says things are panning out in a more cohesive way now: “That was a hard time for me. I thought I knew what I wanted and it sort of didn’t happen like I wanted it to…But I have to say I feel so strong about what we’re doing now…We still have some of the same songs from those sessions but we’ve made them about the band.” Continue reading